Myles Away From Dublin

by Flann O'Brien

  To put the fore-arm in plaster from the elbow, it is necessary to continue the iron dressing down to the knuckles in order to obtain anchorage at the seat of the thumb. That usually immobilises the whole hand and the fingers. I soon found what this meant.

  Like most gents, to wash myself I used nothing more than water, soap and my two hands. Well, I could not wash myself. Preposterous licks with a left-handed cloth may have removed some of the more striking filth. But that was merely to confront me with another ordeal – shaving.

  Plain Impossible

  This was a very lengthy and terrifying business, with great blood losses, and a finished job that looked just awful. Then putting on a shirt, manipulating studs to fix a collar, and finally knotting a tie – that was plain impossible.

  Discarding all pride, I had to call in my consort, to discover, however, that she did not know how to knot a tie, though some lessons soon fixed that. And lacing shoes was another task beyond me.

  Later, I found that a bus is designed for the right hand as to mounting it, dismounting and finding a seat. There was infinite danger in a bus trip. A meal which entailed use of a knife and fork was impossible. Even lighting and smoking a cigarette was perilous. I had to give up completely playing billiards, the violin and the piano. And typing with the left hand only is infinitely arduous.

  Are you curious about all this, dear reader, or even incredulous? Why not find out? For a trifling cost, any chemist will put your own right arm, from elbow to knuckles, in pitiless plaster. Then heaven help you, and me too, if we manage to get mixed up in a rough house.

  What’s funny?

  That question is serious. Just what makes us laugh? I once asked a celebrated physician what a sneeze was. He began giving me a lengthy piece of rawmaish about the windpipe, the throat, the larynx and the lungs. I cut him short.

  ‘Doctor,’ I said, ‘you are describing the location of the sneeze. I asked you about the event itself.’

  After a pause, he said:

  ‘A sneeze is a paroxysm, and quite harmless.’

  ‘A paroxysm? I see. If it’s quite harmless, why does everybody in Ireland say “Bless you” when a person sneezes?’

  ‘Don’t know. It’s an ancient custom, probably pagan.’

  Well, what’s a laugh? Is it another style of paroxysm? Let us immediately note one important distinction between the sneeze and the laugh. Human beings and animals sneeze but animals don’t laugh. Maybe that’s why we insist on regarding them as very thoughtful and infinitely wise. ‘My slippers are missing again, as usual. That dog knows where they are. If only he could talk, he’d tell me.’

  The number of things included under the head of HUMOUR is uncountable. Humour can be visual, or something written or spoken. If you have a man who has a certain arrogance of manner and who is impeccably dressed, it is very funny to pour a bucket of dirty water over him, preferably from an upstair’s window. Should we not pity a person subjected to such a plight? No, indeed. We roar laughing.

  Looking Back

  The year 1854 did not occur yesterday. I have been looking over a bound volume of a weekly named The London Journal under that date, and it seems far further away than a mere 107 years. It seems concerned with events on another planet, and the drawings which adorn it (woodcuts) look slightly unearthly. It announces itself to be a ‘weekly record of literature, science and art’. I have not investigated that claim, and for a peculiar reason: I found the paper nearly impossible to read. I do not wear glasses and regard my sight as ‘normal’, but the print is unbelievably small. This means that the plain people had far better eyesight a century ago.

  But why do I disinter this publication in the year of grace, 1961? Because it contains a funny column under the stupidly cumbrous title of FACETIAE. Is the funny stuff funny? Let the reader judge. I present samples, taken absolutely at random.

  Century-Old Laughs

  Benevolent Old Lady: Sakes alive, child! What do you want two pails of cold victuals for? You had only one yesterday.

  Little Girl: Yes, ma’am; but mother’s taken boarders since.

  (I deduce here that ‘cold victuals’ means slops.)

  Self-Possession and Presence of Mind – A thief, surprised in the act of robbing a bank, was asked what he was about; and answered, ‘Only taking notes.’

  Why may we reasonably expect that the Turk will succeed in preventing the Russian bear from devouring his subjects? Why, because he’s a muzzle-man.

  Straw is a servant that occasionally blows up its master.

  An Orleans paper says: It requires three persons to start a business firm there; one to die with yellow fever, one to get killed in a duel, and the third to wind up the partnership business.

  Why should money not be called ‘blunt’? Because a man can ‘cut a dash’ with it.

  We decidedly object to the first-floor lodger coming home in a state of inebriation and getting into our bed with his boots on.

  When does a lady’s dress resemble Joan of Arc? When it’s made of Orleans.

  The British Tar’s Motto: Semper Hide ’em.

  Cab Colloquy – First Cabby (who is run up against): Now then! Where did you pick up that old strawberry bottle you call a cab? Second Cab (retorts): Same place where yer found that bit of old rag you calls a ’orse.

  A Noun of Multitude: A gentleman accustomed to the signature of the firm in which he was a partner, having to sign a baptismal register of one of his children, entered it as the son of Smith, Jones and Co.

  Well, good reader, had enough? Or can you carry on a bit further? I can NOT.

  Electors treated as half-wits

  By the time these words come to the eye of the reader, he will find himself faced with a choice. The choice will not be whether to vote for FF or FG but whether or not to vote at all.

  The election campaign has been brief (no doubt a stratagem thought clever by Mr Lemass) but it has lacked nothing of the vulgarity and brazen cheek of its many predecessors.

  Both in roared open-air speeches and in garish full-page newspaper ads it is made very clear that the electors are regarded as numbskulls and half-wits.

  It is assumed that he cannot tell a lie from what is at least possible as a down-to-earth reform, and accepts that men of little education are capable of making critical and far-reaching decisions on world affairs, and the domestic economy, honest dealing, and a thousand matters. There is one promise candidates will keep and, curiously, it is not one they ever make from atop a dray: I mean pocketing their handsome salaries. That is a situation one need not be too scornful about. They are professional politicians in the most absolute sense.

  Sense and Senility

  It is universally accepted that persons who engage in the science of government should be grown up. In practice no trust is reposed in the ancient phrase about wisdom emerging from the mouths of babes and sucklings. Yet one can reason too far in the opposite direction. Here are the ages of some FF worthies.

  MacEntee 72

  Ryan 69

  Traynor 75

  Boland 76

  These are, so to speak, some of the stars. But there is no noticeable suffusion of youth elsewhere. Lemass himself is 61. Aiken is well over 63.

  I lack at the moment of writing specific knowledge of the ages of FG ‘shadow cabinet’ but it may be assumed that they are far from being infants, even in the strict legal interpretation of that term.

  It has become customary to picture Ireland as a ‘young resurgent nation’. Whether or not that is true, I think it is gravely scandalous that the conduct of national affairs should be left in the hands of men in their old age. The intention of the four gentlemen I have isolated above seems to be to cling to office until they die. Let us hope that they will not live to be centenarians. Even then, they might continue to interfere in Irish political affairs from a ‘safe seat’ in heaven.

  Small Matters

  It is interesting to wonder who exactly supplies the FF and FG parties with money. (The Labour P
arty I cannot take seriously, since it appears to win only the votes of the disgruntled.) Not long ago an FG deputy asked the appropriate Minister to fix a minimum pork content for sausages. The Minister declined, saying that such an order ‘would not be in the public interest’ or words to that effect. I have long eschewed, rather than chewed, the Irish sausage because I am convinced that certain brands contain no pork at all! The high spice content makes it impossible for the palate to distinguish pork from horse. It must be taken that the firms benefiting from the Minister’s astonishing attitude are heavy subscribers to the Party funds. The FG nose is very likely no cleaner.

  The total cynicism and self-interest of both parties will make many electors other than myself wonder whether it is worth going to the trouble of voting at all. I will not be so impertinent as to advise the reader but I do beg him to think. Some day we will have a Dáil of educated, honest men. When that day comes, an election will be important, even if candidates still scream at us when we emerge from Mass on Sundays.

  Don’t take leave of your senses!

  For the fact is, you’d be poorly off without them. They are usually numbered as five – sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. These faculties are operated by certain organs, under the control of the central nervous system. But man, and many other vertebrates, has not only far more senses than five but even those named are subject to an infinity of nuance and degree. Furthermore, the senses can be easily fooled.

  Sight is perhaps the most important of the senses inasmuch as, apart from its own primary function, its collaboration is demanded by other senses, particularly that of taste. You can for instance, by using a perfectly harmless and tasteless dye, turn milk black. But you will have the greatest difficulty in trying to get anybody to drink it, unless you proffer the glass in pitch darkness. Nicotine is ranked as a mild narcotic and should suffice for itself. But every smoker knows that smoking a cigarette in the dark is utterly futile and unsatisfying: he cannot see the smoke.

  Or consider sweets of a certain kind. They are all made from a gelatinous compound but the cunning manufacturer by using harmless dyes colours them and pretends to impart a fruit flavour; red means strawberry, dark brown is plum, very pale yellow is lemon, green is grape, and so on. The fastidious sweet-eater will pick among a bagful to find the favourite flavour. Yet they all taste absolutely alike. The eye deludes the palate that there is a difference.

  On Standing Up

  A sense not even hinted at in five is that of equilibrium. It is established by a labyrinth in each ear and the verifications of the sight. But even without sight, a man will always know when he is upside down, and so will many animals.

  A dog or a cat held upside down will try to screw the head round to the level it would occupy if the creature were standing up. Another unscheduled sense is that of falling. You get this before you open your parachute or even when taking a high dive. Hunger and thirst are senses and can be very keen and nasty ones.

  It may be said that a branch of the sense of sight is recognition. When you see something that is familiar (your lost dog, maybe) you do more than see it. And here is a curious thing about recognition-by-sight. It is a vertical faculty.

  I saw a film recently which featured Burt Lancaster. This man has a strong, massive face, not unlike the side of a quarry, but you would know it anywhere. In the film he was brutally beaten up by a gang of roughs and the next scene showed him in hospital, lying on an operating table. The camera showed him in a horizontal attitude. His face (which was unmarked) was quite unrecognisable. He might as well have been Saint Peter or Santa Claus. Yet I am not quite right when I say that recognition of a face is a vertical function. Nobody would recognise the most familiar face if presented vertically but upside down.

  Some Tests

  How the sense of taste can be fooled if sight is withdrawn may be shown by two tests which are easily carried out, preferably in a pub. You select as the guinea-pig a man who both smokes and drinks and knows all about both occupations. First, you securely blindfold him. Then say:

  ‘I have two cigarettes here, one lit, the other not lit. I will place a cigarette between your lips seven times successively and you are welcome to take a good pull. After each cigarette you must say whether it was lit or not.’

  It is safe to have a good bet that he will be wrong.

  The other test is even more startling. Your man is still blindfolded. You buy him a bottle of Guinness and a bottle of ale. You hold a glass to his lips five times and let him have a good drink. Again, he is almost certain to fail to distinguish the one drink from the other every time.

  This suggests that brewers are not to be trusted too far in the claims they make in their advertisements. I don’t know. With talk of drink we are back again to that valuable thing, the sense of equilibrium.

  Ah, this eve!

  It would be unthinkable for anybody to write as much as a line for today’s paper without acknowledging that it is Christmas. The fact cannot be ignored. Even non-Christians cannot ignore it unless they are impervious to shoves, batterings, shrill voices, and high prices for things that look very ordinary, if not useless. It is not the feast of Christmas that is in question at all but the disorder and near-panic which precedes it.

  Why is the day in front of a feast-day denoted by this word ‘eve’? That old servant, my dictionary, is no help here. It says bluntly that eve is short for even or evening, but adds (without giving authority) that the word is also used to denote the day preceding a Church festival.

  The Church itself uses the word vigil which from the Latin means ‘watch’, or keeping awake in honour of the day to come. That makes sense; ‘eve’ doesn’t.

  It Can Be Wearing

  It is a plain and sorry fact that as the years go on, more and more people are heard saying ‘I wish it was all over,’ ‘I’m nearly bet,’ ‘Why didn’t I think of buying these things two months ago?’

  The chaos that is commonly known as Christmas shopping is hard to understand, since the exact date of Christmas is known a year in advance, and the prudent man or woman could obviously begin the Christmas tasks at the beginning of, say, September, take things easy, and spend such money as is available wisely, free of the distraction of crowds and hustling sales people.

  If blame for the present situation is to be allotted, I fear it must be placed on the shoulders of the business community, retail and wholesale. I have a suspicion about their procedures and motives. They feel that the occasion of Christmas tends to make the majority of customers careless, sentimental and hysterical, inducing them to buy many things which the unexcited, cold, critical eye would disdain.

  But suppose a wise man realises all this in time and, on the 1st of September, enters a shop and says:

  ‘I would like to see your Christmas cards, please.’

  What will happen? The lady behind the counter will look at him as if he had two heads, give a ghastly smile and beckon to the boss who is somewhere in the background. By some other gesture she will convey to him that a quare fellow has entered the premises, and to look out.

  Holly is an evergreen and sprigs of it may be gathered at any time on a country walk. But no. It must be bought at the last moment from an urchin at the door, who thinks he is selling gold leaf. Absolutely everything connected with Christmas except greeting cards and perishable foodstuffs can be got all the year round if there be found a persevering pioneer who will sternly keep after what he wants. Apparently such an heroic character doesn’t exist.

  The Dublin Terror

  An occasion which was not festive required my own presence in Dublin just a week ago. (I had to see an income tax inspector or else later face exile in Siberia.) I had to traverse almost the whole length of O’Connell Street and the experience was not very different from taking part in a needle-match on the field of international rugby. It was unnerving. Tens of thousands of young children were trailing after dishevelled mothers and hanging on to an infinity of balloons, multitudes of men reeled about
with many of them the worse for drink while decent respectable men trying to hurry about their occasions got shocking falls from prams immured in the midst of the seething mobs.

  It was almost impossible to make any progress, in any direction. It was common to see stout fellows from the country deciding that the way to get through lay in the use of the solid shoulder charge. Yes, CIE had made its contribution; several special trains to Dublin at excursion rates were run to convenience ‘Christmas shoppers’.

  Apart from bedlam and pandemonium, Dublin had absolutely nothing to offer in the way of goods that could not just as well be had, and possibly at a cheaper price, in any country town.

  Well, bruised as I am, I wish all my readers a happy Christmas, but hope they will be more sensible about the one that follows.

  A converted try

  It takes an emergency of somewhat colossal import to prevent the holding of an international rugby match as scheduled. The last interruptions I can remember were apparently caused by the enactment of World War II. The reader should not too glibly assume that this was the most awful and disastrous war in history: let it not be overlooked that history is not yet finished.